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This year is shaping up to a significant one for the online safety industry. We're curated some of the most significant initiatives happening in the space from around the world. So far in 2024:
  • Researchers find deplatforming is mostly effective, that the risk landscape was slightly improved overall in 2023 and confirm that teenage gamers face a lot of safety challenges.
  • CSAM images are found in AI training datasets and UK Police undertake an investigation into a sexual assault in a VR environment.
  • Safer Internet Day was celebrated in over 180 countries and territories.
  • AI is forcing online safety to innovate and we've established OSX Working Groups to help drive that change.
  • A flurry of announcements from big tech preceded a dramatic US Congressional hearing

AI: Guardrails and Safety Nets


Conversations about AI are dominating the online safety landscape. This year is set to result in rapid progress for AI – and its ability to cause harm. We take a look at why AI represents a substantive disruption to the online safety system and how industry practices need to evolve to meet the challenge. The OSX want to help facilitate this to ensure our AI empowered adversaries don't get too far ahead. Find out how to join our working groups designed to foster innovative solutions.

Emerging

AI and CSAM
The Stanford Internet Observatory identified hundreds of known images of child sexual abuse material in an open dataset used to train popular AI text-to-image generation models.

VR Sexual Assault

UK Police are investigating a virtual sexual assault of a girl's avatar. This is the first case of its type in the UK, it is expected to test existing laws for their applicability in VR environments.

Cybersecurity
Research by Kapersky notes that a rise in children's use of AI based apps, online games, and smart home devices is exposing their families to increased cyber security risks.

Free Book: Gaming and Extremism

This book examines the "gamification of extremism." It charters the increase in the use of games for the dissemination of extremist propaganda, radicalization, recruitment, and mobilization.


Editors Linda Schlegel and Rachel Kowert bring together a range of insights from world-leading experts in the field to provide the first comprehensive overview of gaming and extremism.

Download the PDF here

Research

Gaming Safety for Young People

A survey of Australians aged 8 to 17 years old explores the experiences, risks, and benefits of online gaming. It finds 40% had negative experiences and 30% of teen gamers had been exposed to potentially harmful ideas.

Deplatforming Harmful Influencers
Researchers confirm that deplatforming does reduce attention towards norm-violating influencers on social media with the average attention down 64% on Google and 43% on Wikipedia 12 months later.

Global Comparisons and Overview

The Annual Microsoft Global Survey covering 17 countries finds the risk landscape was slightly improved in 2023, and declines in good online civility and the rise of bad online civility was mostly halted.
The seventh issue of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety includes articles on content moderation on federated platforms, research on approaches to analyzing multilingual social media data, research into the sourcing of conspiracy theories, and an experimental study that advances work on when people detect AI-generated content.

Regulation Roundup

Australia
The eSafety Commissioner commences civil penalty proceedings against X Corp after it fails to pay the $610,500 AUD infringement notice issued in September.
X Corp has filed for a judicial review of the notice.

UK
OFCOM continues to build a 350 person Online Safety Act team and issues first age assurance guidance. It notes age self-declaration will not be considered capable of meeting the required 'highly effective' threshold.

Canada
The Online Harms bill has been constructed around seven harmful content categories set to establish new Digital Safety Commission and increase sentences for spreading hate online.

Sri Lanka
The Controversial Online Safety Act is passed into law on January 24. The first arrest (for allegedly carrying out a funded smear campaign against the Government) is announced on Feb 11, then disputed.

Tech Industry

Microsoft
Microsoft outlines approach to combatting abusive AI-generated content including architecture, watermarking, user tools, collaboration, legislation, and education.

X / Twitter

X Corp announces plans to open a Trust and Safety 'Centre of Excellence' in Texas employing 100 moderators.

Meta
Meta announced a collaboration with the Center for Open Science to share data with select academic researchers who study wellbeing.

Safer Internet Day 2024

Safer Internet Day was celebrated in over 180 countries and territories on February 6 and once again provided a focal point for online safety activities and promotion around the world.

There were many updates from the tech industry including: expanded youth safety measures from YouTube, expanded services to help teens avoid sextortion scams from Meta, and the Cybersafe:GoodGame was added to Minecraft Worlds. Yubo polled users in partnership with the UK Safer Internet Centre and Apple spotlighted existing safety features and tools.

Podcasts

Trust in Tech
Recent episodes cover key issues for integrity workers including Careers in T&S, Personal Safety and a project to build the 'wikipedia' of integrity resources.

Interface

An opportunity to think about Safer Internet Day 2025 as Childnet International CEO Will Gardner discusses the range of activities undertaken by schools and organisations in 2024.

Extra Analysis and Opinions

Join and Contribute

The Online Safety Exchange (OSX) develops products and services to serve and support the online safety community - and works with international experts to achieve this. It also curates a regular newsletter for an ever-increasing subscriber base. If you would like to contribute something to a future Online Safety Industry Update, please email us on news@onlinesafetyexchange.org
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